


stray cats dream in techno

by m (pistachiomadeleines)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: DJ Otabek Altin, M/M, minors drinking beer, minors entering clubs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-03 01:44:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10232906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pistachiomadeleines/pseuds/m
Summary: When Otabek shows up to St Petersburg for the weekend, Yuri tries to show him around - only to discover that Otabek knows his city better than he does.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by Travelman: 48 hours in St Petersburg!

Yuri’s phone was dangling precariously at his fingertips, only moments away from joining his water bottle in its parabolic flight across the ice and into the nest of colorful outerwear strewn across the bleachers, when the screen lit up with an incoming text.

Ordinarily Yuri, who liked the idea of keeping people waiting unless they were his coaches, would have ignored it and resumed practice, thus killing two birds with one phone - but he’d spotted the name on the notification, and it had stirred such great curiosity as to what the sender was doing texting him in the middle of the day in Almaty that he lingered by the boards a second longer to jab impatiently at the notification, and take in the three short lines that read

_Hi.  I’m in your city.  What are you up to today?_

So the sender wasn’t in Almaty.  For only the third time ever (that Yuri remembered anyway), he was in the same city as Yuri.  The seconds marched by like an army of little black ants, carrying Yuri’s scattered thoughts far away from the rink and back to last year’s Grand Prix final at Barcelona, and the Four Continents Championships at Taipei five months ago... Then Yakov barked his name, and something about triple axels not jumping themselves, and

“I’m feeling funny,” Yuri found himself lying, and discreetly slid his phone onto the nearest surface before skating up to Yakov.  “I think I have… a fever.”

“Caused by an android virus?” said Mila innocently as she glided by, having somehow managed, while executing camel spins on the other side of the rink, to spy on Yuri well enough to see through his falsehoods.

Fortunately Yakov wasn’t the motherly sort; he didn’t reach over to feel Yuri’s forehead and throat for a temperature the way some people do on reflex, simply giving Yuri his permission to leave practice early.  And this Yuri did as soon as he’d flipped Mila off, and changed in the bathroom while hurriedly texting Otabek

_Not much.  Lunch?_

 

 

 

“This,” said Yuri, “is where the royal family would walk down for the ceremony of the blessings of the waters.  Or something.”

Yuri had never expected to find himself forming sentences about royal families, but here he was, pulling them from some distant memory of an educational tour his grandfather had dragged him along on years and years ago, and repeating them for Otabek’s benefit as they ascended the carpeted Jordan Staircase at the State Hermitage Museum.

Yuri wasn’t sure how they’d ended up at the museum.  A combination of the July mid-day heat and their inability to ingest any more street food must have driven them here - he must have foolishly suggested it while trying to rack his brains for something to do, and Otabek, drugged almost comatose by the heat and all the blinis and the beef stroganoff Yuri had plied him with, must have agreed.

One metro ride and a checked backpack later, it seemed too much of a waste to turn back,  even though it was slowly dawning upon Yuri that he should have taken Otabek somewhere cooler than a museum - museums were where you took old and lame frenemies like Katsudon, who wandered around foreign cities wearing glasses and a surgical mask, and then “lost” them in an exhibit about Peter the Great.  You didn’t take mysterious, brooding boys who liked leather jackets and motorbikes to the museum.

At least Otabek didn’t seem bored; he was frowning as usual as he followed Yuri up the stairs, which, as Yuri had come to learn, didn’t mean that he was angry but that he was contemplating the world around him.  He glanced up and down, taking in the gilded wood carvings and mirrored windows without comment.  “What’s the ceremony of the blessings of the waters?”

“No idea,” muttered Yuri, and with that, suddenly lost momentum.  He swung himself onto a banister and looked away just in case his face had turned as red as it felt.

“Hmm,” said Otabek.  He leaned over the banister beside Yuri, gazing down at the crowds of tourists teeming in the hallway below.  Then his phone buzzed, and he checked it, and swore.  “I actually just remembered I have to head out in around fifteen…”

Unbelievable.  Among the many marble busts and statues lining the corridor they were on, Yuri located Bartolomeo Rastrelli, the architect of this damned building, and flipped him off.

“Do you like to dance?” Otabek asked suddenly, turning to face Yuri right at the moment that his middle finger had retreated into his fist.

Yuri stared at him.  “We’re figure skaters.”

“No, I meant like at clubs.  Cos there’s a techno thing at Liquid Room on Medikov Prospect tonight, and I’m djing-”  

“Djing,” said Yuri faintly.  This was a lot of information to process all at once.  It was beyond cool that Otabek was a dj, but techno?  Yuri had only ever heard techno in the back of Moscow taxis, and the words _soulless_ and  _headache-inducing_ immediately came to mind.  He had had no idea that Otabek liked that kind of music, much less produced it.  But he gamely said, “Okay.”

“Yeah?” said Otabek.  “I should warn you it’s very low-key, just a last minute thing I’m doing because someone else dropped out.  I’m not even the main act-”

“As long as you’re not playing Katy Perry.”

“There is no danger of that happening,” Otabek promised solemnly.  “I’ll put you on the guest list then.  Text me if you decide to bring friends.”

 

 

 

< party tonight.  Liquid room, mn

 

> (Face With Open Mouth )

> you got invited to a party?

> wait

> (Face With Open Mouth )

> you have a fake id?

 

< no but i know people.

 

> who??

 

< otabek.  he’s in town for the weekend

< and he’s djing

 

> wow!  Are you’re inviting me because i’m your coolest friend??

 

< do you want to come or not, hag?

 

> ha yes i’m down (Smiling Face With Smiling Eyes )(Smiling Face With Smiling Eyes ) let’s meet at the Park Pobedy station and take the metro there together?

 

 

Although Yuri didn’t appreciate the overly familiar arm Mila had thrown around his shoulders on the subway, or having to dodge her repeated attempts to paint his nails (she’d pregamed, he could smell the vodka on her breath), he was glad not to have to make the walk up to the back entrance of Liquid Room alone.  

It was unnerving.  A small group of guys and two girls, all both taller and cooler than Yuri as evidenced by their complicated hairstyles, stood around smoking in the dim sodium lights, and each gaze was inevitably drawn first to Mila, then to Yuri.  Even from here, through layers of brick and steel and air, Yuri could hear the muted pounding of bass like a distant heartbeat.

"Do I look ok?" Mila whispered as they approached.

"You look like a prostitute," Yuri hissed back rudely, but before she could come up with a retort the door cracked open, percussion joining the bass in leaking out into the alleyway in a trail of skittering hi hats and snare drums, and Otabek stepped out.  “You’re early,” he said, his eyes finding Yuri’s immediately.  All heads turned towards Yuri.  

“It’s Yuri Plisetsky!” said a voice from somewhere behind Otabek, and a bleached blond someone suddenly emerged in the doorway, leaning over Otabek and slinging one heavily tattooed arm across his shoulders as he strained to get a better view of Yuri.

Yuri stared back, and then one of the two girls in the group of smokers gathered around the doorway piped up, “And who is Yuri Plisetsky’s friend?”

“Mila Babicheva,” said Mila, and immediately embarrassed Yuri by winking tipsily.

“And I’m Alex,” added the guy who had his hands on Otabek’s shoulders, even though no one had asked.

“Alex is a bartender here,” said Otabek, for clarification.  “He got me this gig, and the couch I’m crashing on this weekend.”

Yuri had thought bartenders were meant to be busy.  Too busy to be standing around in doorways sinking their bony little hands and chins into other people’s shoulders anyway.

“It was great to watch you kick Beka’s ass at Four Continents,” said Alex, still gazing happily at Yuri.  “I saw it all on youtube.”

“I kicked everyone’s asses,” said Yuri coldly, and thought _Beka!_ with a pang, just as Otabek muttered, “Fuck off, Sasha,” and elbowed Alex in the ribs with an easy familiarity that made Yuri feel as if he’d been the one to take the blow.

_Sasha!_

Mila was beginning to regard Alex with sudden interest.  “So if you’re a bartender,” she said, “can you get us drinks?”

Fifteen minutes later, a Baltika no. 3 was sweating condensation into Yuri’s closed fist as he stood immobile at the edge of the dance floor.  Thankfully Otabek’s fake blond friend was gone, having finally returned to his post behind the bar, but so was Otabek - he’d stuck around to help Yuri pick out a beer, before disappearing backstage to set up since he was coming on next.

Yuri watched people dance.  There wasn’t much of a crowd - Otabek had said there would be right before the main act arrived, but not this early - and many of the partygoers, including Mila, were taking full advantage of this fact by carving exuberant and insane-looking paths through the air with their limbs.  

And yet, Yuri liked the music.  It was weird but in a good way, not what he was expecting at all.  Otabek’s kind of techno wasn’t soulless - there was no false cheer about it, and the layered beats were the opposite of mind numbing, and by the time Yuri was halfway through his drink they’d worked their way into his blood well enough for him not to protest when Mila reached for his hand again and led him onto the dance floor.

How weird it was to dance without critique.  Yuri lifted his arms half expecting Lilia to show up at any moment and straighten the crooked lines, and spun slowly across the wooden floor wondering why Yakov wasn’t carefully keeping count of the number of rotations.  When he looked up again, Otabek was watching him from the dj booth.  The sleeves of his button-down shirt were rolled up to the elbows, and his laptop sat open on the table as he plugged in cords and cables and things while the first dj packed up.

Yuri slipped away from Mila’s embrace and wandered over.

“This,” said Otabek, making space for Yuri in the booth, “is my amateur little setup.  Headphones, laptop, turntables, midi controller.  Drum pad.”

His hands landed on one of the many lighted buttons, and suddenly the music started up amid hooting and cheering from the crowd.

“What are all these buttons?” asked Yuri.

“Here, this is neither the time nor the place, but I’ll give you a crash course,” said Otabek.  Stepping behind Yuri, he gently took Yuri’s right hand by the wrist and guided it to a touchstrip.  Then, pressing his palm to the back of Yuri’s hand like a glove, he said, “This modulates the pitch,” and slid Yuri’s finger upwards.  Hand in hand, they travelled across the controller.  “Octave up,” said Otabek, and pressed down on the button beneath Yuri’s index finger.  He moved them left by half an inch.  “Octave down.”

Later, Yuri went to the bar to order a second Baltika No. 3 and watched Otabek work the crowd from afar.  Everyone looked so alive, including Mila, who’d found herself a new dance partner - the girl who’d asked her name earlier, Yuri realized.  He sipped at the lager, making sure to keep the chilled bottle in his left hand - far away from the lingering heat in the other hand, which he wanted to hold on to for as long as possible.

 

 

 

The interior of Alex’s apartment, on the third floor of a quaint building along one of the many canals branching out from the Neva river, wasn’t that different from the club.  

Two of the lights in the living room were blown, leaving the work of illuminating the surroundings to a sole halogen bulb that dangled nakedly from the ceiling above.  Not that there was much to see anyway - there was hardly any furniture, and the few available surfaces were crowded with ashtrays and empty beer bottles and stacks of vinyl records.  Yuri surveyed gloom and the clutter, half-acknowledging introductions to roommates and roommates’ significant others, until he spotted a fuzzy feline body unwinding itself and regarding him cautiously from the couch where Otabek must have slept the night before.

“That’s my cat, Mango,” said Alex, following his gaze, but Yuri had already hopped onto the couch and introduced himself.

Yuri wasn’t sure how long he ended up sitting on the couch with the cat, amid a pile of rumpled t-shirts and socks and sweatpants.  Someone passed him another beer at some point, and then the world beyond him and Mango faded out and slipped a little further away, and the next thing Yuri knew the girl from the club had climbed into Mila’s lap, and Alex was lighting a joint, and Otabek was telling Alex to keep his smoke and drugs away from his professional athlete lungs, and then someone cracked open a window.

“I’m getting sleepy,” said the girl from the club suddenly.  She looked pointedly at Mila, who hesitated and looked at Yuri, who looked at Mango, who meowed.

Yuri shrugged.  “Go on without me.  I’m still hanging out.”

“I rented a bike.  I’ll give Yuri a ride home whenever he wants,” said Otabek from somewhere behind the couch, where Yuri couldn’t see him.

“Wish _I_ had a personal chauffeur too,” said Mila as she left, and the two girls were heard cackling darkly over some private joke as they disappeared down the hallway.

As if taking the girls’ departure as their cue to leave, the roommates retreated back into their rooms one by one, and then Alex, realizing he’d run out of beer, headed out to get more.  

“Are you going to ignore me all night?” said Otabek quietly when the living room was empty.  The floorboards creaked slightly as he crossed the room.

“If you keep hiding behind the couch, then yes,” Yuri retorted, but he was smiling.  They both were.

“Want to see the rooftop?”

Mango followed them all the way to the door but not beyond, and once the door shut behind them they were alone - alone for the first time in that long and strange day Yuri sometimes still had trouble believing was really happening.

From the rooftop, Yuri could see the canal below, sparkling with street lights, and a whole network of waterways stretching quietly out into the river.  He’d lived in St Petersburg long enough to judge their location from the bridges spanning the water, and the spires rising up into the slowly lightening sky, but even after all those years in the city he’d never seen anything like this before.  He was so moved, and so drunk, that he did a pirouette and landed in an arabesque inches away from the gutters

“Whoa,” said Otabek, and caught him by the wrist.  

They landed in a sprawl on the red brick tiling.  Yuri lay back, and moments later, he felt Otabek do the same.  The world was spinning slightly.

“So,” he said, staring up at the stars, “You have friends.”

“More than two, in fact,” said Otabek.  “Wait till you meet the gang in Almaty.”

Yuri imagined a posse of ultra-cool Kazakh instagram models, all with tattooes and complicated hairstyles.  “I’d always assumed you were a lone wolf,” he said.  “Did you have to kidnap the others and beg them to become your friends, too?”

“No,” said Otabek, “Just you.”

As promised, Otabek took Yuri home on his rental motorbike at the end of the night, insisting that Yuri hold on with both hands for safety.  Yuri kept nodding off intermittently as they rode through the empty streets - he’d been up for twenty one hours now - awoken with a start every time the motorbike swung around a corner, or kicked back to life at an intersection. But when Otabek pulled to a stop at his street, he realized he still wasn’t ready for the night to end.

“Do you want to come upstairs?” he said suddenly, as Otabek reached for the handlebars.  Otabek paused, eyes widening in surprise.  “I have a couch, too, if you want to crash here.”

There was a long moment where they just looked at each other.  The deer in headlights look on Otabek’s face had turned into something unreadable, even by regular Otabek Altin standards, and then he killed the engine and said, into the quiet, “Next time, alright?  I have a flight to catch tomorrow.”

Yuri’s last thought before he fell asleep beneath the pale early morning sky was of his and Otabek’s twenty minute visit to the State Hermitage Museum the afternoon before.  What a failure that had been, he remembered, but this time the memory made him smile rather than grimace.  

 

 

 

A light rain was falling outside, muting the bright blue of the late morning sky and the brassy honks of traffic passing through the streets below.  

Yuri sat up in bed, alarmed that he’d overslept, until he remembered it was Sunday, and that there was no practice today.  He fell back against the pillows and yanked his phone off its charging cable on the bedside table.

There were a number of texts - frantic messages from Mila, whom he’d forgotten to inform that he’d gotten home safely last night, and who had therefore assumed he’d died, Yakov asking if he’d managed to sleep off his fever…  He ignored them all once he saw that Otabek had also texted.

Otabek had sent a photo.  Yuri hadn’t noticed it getting taken, but he distinctly remembered being on the inside of the moment captured - he’d been sitting cross legged on the couch, and laughing as Mango tried to climb onto his head.  What he hadn’t noticed in that moment, besides getting photographed, was Otabek watching them from the other side of the couch.  

 _Alex wanted you to have this_ , the accompanying message read.   _Thanks for coming out last night._

Yuri lay in bed with his phone across his chest, its warmth radiating through its casing, past the light fabric of his t-shirt, and against his skin.  He contemplated getting up and heading to the rink, or the ballet studio as he sometimes did on Sundays and public holidays, but today he felt funny - not sick as he’d told Yakov yesterday, but different.  

 _Next time I’m coming to Almaty_ , he texted back, and sprung out of bed and into the morning.

 


End file.
